Blog Post

360 Degree Competencies and the Strengths-Based Culture

By: Marcie Levine; Chelsea DaggettPublished: 8/9/2017

Strengths-based learning requires “knowing your strengths
and investing in others’ strengths” to build better teams and develop
leadership skills. This approach can lead to significant increases in traditional
markers of organizational success like productivity, retention, and customer
satisfaction. Focusing on strengths helps businesses and employees alike. Only 13% of today’s workforce is engaged at
work but that number rises dramatically to 67% when managers focus on employees’
strengths.

SurveyConnect’s approach to 360 degree assessments
emphasizes a balanced approach; if fact we recommend the following open-ended
questions for a 360 review:

“ What do you value most about working with this person?”
and “What would make this person more effective in their job?”

When participants are reviewing their 360 individual
reports, they look for themes in these areas – it is as important to play to
strengths as it is to focus on potential ineffective areas of performance. There are key advantages to looking at strengths through a 360 degree lens:

By identifying what your employees are good at,
you can move the right person into
team projects and new positions. Making these decisions based on strengths allows
the employees to feel more competent and develops more efficiency.

These reviews are especially helpful for
developing high-performing employees because the resulting action plans
challenge them. Employees that show passion and independence thrive in a
strengths-based culture.

One of the biggest criticisms of the annual
review and feedback process is that it makes employees suspicious and defensive.
Focusing on strengths helps to encourage rather than critique and discourage them.

One of the most commonly praised benefits of
360 degree review is its ability to promote self-awareness in employees who
typically self-rate alongside peer, manager, and subordinate ratings. This
comparison offers individuals several different perspectives on their behaviors and skills. They can
use this set of data to refer to when deciding how to prioritize their goals
and how best to use their strengths.

360 degree assessments offer the feedback needed to support
a strengths-based culture. Both the human and business side of Human Resources benefit from
this approach.

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SurveyConnect, Inc.

The SurveyConnect Team offers complete support for every phase of 360 survey design, implementation, and analysis. From interim project support to fully outsourced solutions, we provide the services to ensure quality results throughout the survey process. Our expertise in data collection and easy-to-generate reports helps our customers maximize the results from their assessments and surveys.